Summer Renovation Project: Exterior Painting of our Home

We have been blessed with an extremely fun and busy summer filled with lots of road tripping, camping adventures and splash park dates. However, while our little one rests we have been chipping away one cedar plank at a time at the exterior of our home. Our goal for this season was to renovate the entire outside of our house before the end of the summer. It was a major undertaking and we were worried we would not have enough time to complete this renovation project with all the rain we’ve had but we are happy to announce that we did it!

Our fixer upper had a rough exterior shell. Made the place look terrible when driving by but thankfully the cedar boards were still in excellent shape – they just needed some love. Matt did replace a few of the boards as they were damaged by too much moisture but overall we got lucky with the quality of the wood on the house.

At one point we thought about hiring someone to paint the house for us. I shopped around and had a few estimates done from painting companies. They ranged in price anywhere between $3,500 to $10,000 for a new paint job. This estimate did not include building new exterior beams for the front of our home. We made an executive decision to save the money for more family adventures and tackle on this project ourselves. (Surprised? You shouldn’t be if you have been following along on our renovation adventures. Ha ha.)

A fresh paint job on the exterior of any house has the power to totally transform the look and feel of a home. The new coats of paint will protect your home from snow, sun, wind and rain damage. If you properly apply the exterior paint, it should last for a good 10-15 years depending on the products you choose.

We did our research and shopped around before deciding on the products we wanted to use. We purchased the Flood brand of wood stain paint through our friends at our local Benjamin Moore shop. We selected which Benjamin Moore colours we loved and they matched it to the stain colour. Here’s our little guy inspecting the new shiny cans in the house prior to starting the renovation.

Our neighbourhood is filled with lots of neutral coloured homes. At first we thought we wanted to paint the house a royal blue with an exterior white trim but after looking around we would have stuck out a little too much with the colour choice in our neighbourhood. We wanted to blend in with what our community already has.

We selected the following colours for the exterior of our home. The exterior colour is Benjamin Moore’s Chelsea Gray HC – 168 while the trim around the home is Benjamin Moore’s Oxford White CC – 30.

Before starting any sort of painting on our home we spent a good couple of weeks cleaning the exterior of the cedar. The house needed a thorough scrubbing. We utilized a pressurized power washer followed by our scraping tools to chip away all the chipping leftover paint. We also took this opportunity to fill any gaps in the cedar. Matt also caulked the siding and trim at this point. We also took this opportunity to remove all the old shutters from the windows. I might use them for another upcycle project but they will most definitely not be put back on the house.

We spent many weekends and evenings after Adam went to bed painting the exterior of the home. At first we thought we were over our heads in paint buckets but plank by plank we got the house completed.

We were not big fans of the four columns on the front of our home so we decided to remodel those as well. Matt utilized smart board to create the new look. We’ve had many neighbours stop by while walking their dogs to chat about the progress of our home and we have received a ton of compliments. I even saw two individuals on different occasions stop their vehicles in front of the home to take pictures.

In the near future we will be replacing a few of the windows and adding a little more landscaping to finish the look but for now we are going to enjoy our cold summer beverages as we deserve it! Cheers!